


pedal, boys!

by forochel



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Gen, That Swedish Princess Joke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 18:16:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3660279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forochel/pseuds/forochel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brought to you by the fact that I did genuinely think, at that point in the movie, against all common sense, that Princess Tilde WAS going to be busted out of that cell and reveal secret Swedish Ninja Princess moves and help save the world. </p><p>And then the more I thought about it the sadder I was that wasn't the actual ending. Bah, humbug.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pedal, boys!

**Author's Note:**

> title's from bad reputation, by joan jett & the black hearts

"What's going on out there?" Someone abruptly hammers at the steel door behind him. It shakes alarmingly. "Let me out!"

Eggsy turns around, confused, and reaches to release the hatch. It snaps upwards, and recognition vaguely dawns on him as he squints at the blonde-haired, blue-eyed bird in the cell.

"Aren't you that —"

"Yes, yes, I am Princess Tilde of Sweden, now let me out of here." It's amazing how much dismissal one person could channel through a slot six by two inches wide. Must be a royalty thing. 

Still. "You might be safer in there, Princess."

"Don't be stupid," she says, "I can help you." Then she throws herself bodily against the door and it make a pretty threatening thump.

"Uh, Merlin?" Eggsy mutters. 

"Oh, for god's sake," Princess Tilde says. "Stop muttering to your handler and just let me out; you think Britain is the only country with a super secret service?" 

"Well," says Merlin, an amused lilt to his brogue. "As the lady wishes, then. Hold your watch to the lock, please, Eggsy." 

Eggsy almost falls in through the door when Princess Tilde wrenches it open, and almost swallows his tongue, because she's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen in person, except maybe that one time he saw Jessie J in Shoreditch. She's wearing a silk dress that she's torn the sleeves up for, to tie her hair back in a severe ponytail and bind her skirt into billowy pants. 

"Right," she says imperiously. "Give me a gun." 

"I don't think —"

She leans over, slides a royal hand under his jacket, ignoring his affronted, "Oi!" and withdraws with his Glock. "You," she says, cocking the gun, "are a very stupid little boy." 

"I'm about to save the world!" Eggsy says. 

Princess Tilde gives him the most expressively unimpressed look Eggsy's seen since his maths teacher in Sixth Form. 

"All right," she says, "On three - I go and you cover me."

"What," says Eggsy. "That's a terrible idea. I've got the bulletproof ... armour."

She draws herself up in a very regal way, but then - because Eggsy really ain't no gentleman, he hits her (gently!) in the side. 

"Ow!" Princess Tilde yelps. "What the fuck?" 

"See? No armour." Eggsy gestures up and down at her, and then repeats it at himself. "Armour."

"You _dare_ \--"

"Children," Merlin interrupts, "you're wasting _lives_." 

"Right, okay, you cover me, I go," Eggsy says, and doesn't count to three to break cover. 

It turns out that Sweden really did have a super secret service that their royals were part of, because the Princess keeps up easily with him as they leap over bodies and splatters of blood and grey matter. It's actually kind of starting to smell. She doesn't gag, so Eggsy doesn't either. 

"How'd you end up in here if you're some sort of ninja princess, then?" he asks incredulously as they run down a straight corridor strewn with bodies in white camo. 

"A wise agent knows when to cut her losses," she replies. "And when to be underestimated."

And then she saves his life, basically, by getting off a warning shot as he bursts heroically through the doors to the party room and Gazelle bursts villainously and far more dramatically through the glass panel of the control room. 

Gazelle has to twist - gazelle-like, of course - in mid-air to avoid the shot and lands with a roll, coming swiftly up with a dangerous sounding _shink_. Eggsy's eyes are drawn to her stiletto prosthetics almost unwillingly, and Princess Tilde mutters, "Devil woman," behind him. 

"Cheers for the save, Princess," says Eggsy. He'd turn around to give her a wink, but he's not keen on being sliced in two whilst he's at it. "But you'd better stay back now." 

"Shut up," says Princess Tilde. Her voice is coming from behind his left shoulder now, and Eggsy shifts his weight to his right. 

"I can take the both of you," Gazelle snarls, and shifts her stance before taking off to a running start. 

Eggsy goes left; Princess Tilde goes right, and their shots _just_ manage to miss Gazelle's lithely twisting form. It's anyone's guess as to who she'll go for first, but then Princess Tilde makes the decision for Gazelle when she shouts, "You take her, I'll deal with Valentine!" and takes off for the control room.

She's running on _bare feet_ across a floor covered in shattered glass and doesn't seem to be noticing it. Fucking Scandinavians. Basshunter had a lot to answer for. 

Gazelle turns like she's on a pin, which she is of-fucking-course, and takes off after Princess Tilde. Tilde. He hasn't got the mental breath to keep the honorific in, to be honest.

"Aw, fuck no," Eggsy sighs, and fires at her, only to be denied by flashes of those knives. He runs after them as well, wrenching a metal leg off one of the tables as he goes by. 

Gazelle's closing the gap on Tilde way too fast; it's like she's superhuman or something. Then Tilde turns, hand flashing out, and Gazelle's reeling back, clawing at her eyes, shouting something probably very rude in what sounds like Spanish. Tilde speeds on and Eggsy jumps up onto a table, gathers himself, and leaps up and over. 

It occurs to him as he describes the maximal arc of his parabola, that this is very Matrix of him.

Then gravity exerts its effect with great prejudice, and Eggy's bearing down on Gazelle with the metal leg angled to beat her head in. Messy, but undoubtedly effective. 

Of course, best laid plans and all that, because she sweeps a leg up and out, and Eggsy's suddenly making a running landing and has a shorter staff than he'd started out with. But Gazelle's on him too quickly for him to process that, and then it's just dodge, dodge, side swipe, damn that was too close, dodge, was that his _tie_ , dodge, step around and get thrown into a table. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he spots Tilde near a side door that _must_ lead up to the stairs. 

"Oi, gimpy!" He shouts, levering himself up, tossing the little stub of a metal leg at Gazelle. She knocks it carelessly aside, red eyes narrowed at him. "How're those eyes feeling? Shed a tear for all the poor proles fighting each other? What about your mum and dad, then? Not worthy?"

Gazelle's face twists, before smoothing out. "I'm not going to fall for that," she tells him, and slides her right leg back, the blade of it screeching against the floor. She's panting, which Eggsy takes as a point to him, ignoring the cuts he's bearing and the rib he's fairly certain is bruised from the bad landing. 

And the blink of a moment she's on him again, faster than anyone he's ever fought before, and strong. It's like a dance, almost, a dance of knives, the way she punches one moment and then snaps out a leg the next to try and literally cut him out from under. But he's slowly, slowly, manoeuvring her so that she's got her back to the door he burst in through and he's in between her and the control room. All Eggsy has to do is buy time for Tilde to get up to the control room. 

Speaking of which, where the hell was she?

He's starting to slip, starting to get worn down by the rapid brutality of Gazelle's assault, when he hears Valentine shout, "PRINCETHTH! NOT THAT IT ITHN'T A PLEATHURE, BUT — OW, MOTHERFUCKER!" and hit the ground with a loud crack. 

Gazelle's eyes flick up and he takes the opportunity to punch her in the throat. She flinches, and it takes her centre of gravity off enough that she falls back, gasping raspily and holding her throat. 

"Satellites disconnecting," Merlin says tersely, startling Eggsy. "Make sure he stays down, Eggsy."

"MAKE SURE HE STAYS DOWN, PRINCESS!" Eggsy relays.

There's no reply for a few, taut seconds, only the sounds of thumping and flesh driving into flesh, before she shouts back, sounding wild, "I'M WORKING ON IT. NOW FINISH HER!" 

"On it," Eggsy mutters, eyeing Gazelle, who's gone pale and stock still.

"You ... fucking ... _idiots_ ," she's rasping out, eyes gone darker with rage. "I worked _ages_ on that thing!" 

Faintly, in the background, they can hear Tilde shouting, "And _that's_ for Prince Harry, you old coot!" 

Eggsy wonders briefly about what it was with posh women and ginger men, but then Gazelle's eyes are fixed on the control room, and she's changed bending her knees in a way that he's very quickly coming to realise as presaging a jump.

"Oh no you fucking don't," he says, and starts running. 

He hasn't got a clue what he's going to do once he's up there, to be honest, but then like a ghost of Christmas past, Harry and the armoury and the German aristocrat's salute flash past in his brain. Harry wasn't German, though he probably was some kind of landed gentry, so Eggsy dedicates the salute to him as he clicks his heels, narrowly dodges having his face sliced, and thanks Roxy for making him practise opening his hip abductors with yoga when he stretches that tiny bit more and feels the poisoned blade make contact with flesh. 

It's not the most graceful landing he makes, stumbling into a crouch, not when Gazelle's landed on her feet. But that's okay: he's a gentleman in triumph; he'll allow her last little taste of victory. 

A jolt of pity rushes through him, unexpectedly, when Gazelle stumbles forward and looks down at her rapidly necrotising arm, then up at him with something almost like betrayal. 

"You..." she manages to get out, before crumpling and collapsing backwards, onto the floor. 

Eggsy picks his way over to her, wincing a little as he discovers a sprained ankle, just to be sure. Standing over her corpse, he's pretty damned sure.

"I'VE SORTED HER OUT, PRINCESS," he tilts his head back and calls up. "GET ON WITH IT ALREADY."

Valentine abruptly appears in the jagged hole that Gazelle made with her dramatic entrance through the glass. He looks awful, face puffy and like he's being held in place by sheer force of enraged Scandinavian princess. 

"She _loveth_ her dramaticth," Valentine slurs out through where his mouth approximately ought to be. 

"Destroy that console once you're done," Merlin orders. "And make that quick."

"And this," Princess Tilde says stridently, "is _for the world_." Then she pushes him off the ledge and he lands on his neck with the resounding crack of one who is very, definitively, dead. 

Eggsy picks up one of Gazelle's prostheses and stabs him through the heart anyway, just in case. 

"Bring that up here," Princess Tilde commands. What was it with everybody bloody ordering Eggsy around, really. "We can destroy this devil's work with it." 

"I hear and obey," sighs Eggsy, and makes his way up to her. 

When he strolls into the room, the princess is sitting on the floor, picking glass out of the soles of her feet. 

She looks up at him and says, "You are a very cheeky, very silly little boy." 

Eggsy raises his eyebrows at her, walking over to the console. "And you, madam, are a fucking madwoman."

Princess Tilde shrugs insouciantly. "I am not mad. That," and she points over her shoulder with a thumb. Eggsy's sure that had been banned in the etiquette lessons he'd had to take as a recruit. " _That_ ," she emphasises, "was a madman."

"Setting the bar low, aren't we," says Eggsy.

"Would you _stop fucking around and annihilate that fucking thing_ ," Merlin interrupts, irritation thickening his brogue.

Eggsy hefts Gazelle's erstwhile leg in one hand. "Well, mad or not, do you want to wreck this thing with me?"

Princess Tilde hobbles to her feet, adrenaline no longer numbing the pain apparently, and grins. It's a fierce and wild thing. 

"Fuck yeah."


End file.
